Jonathan Hodges

Jonathan Hodges was born about 1835 in Aylesford, Kings County, Nova Scotia, the fourth of nine children of Jonathan Hodges and Ruth Taylor. I have not found much record of his early life. His father died in 1869, and there is reference to his brother William Hodges and another man moving forward with the administration of Jonathan senior’s estate, as the son was living in Pennsylvania. I have not found any other record linking him to that state.

Jonathan married Henrietta Jane Vroom on November 28, 1870, in Aylesford. Both lived in Morristown. The wedding was witnessed by his uncle Stephen Taylor and her step-father Thomas Roland, Rev. James Taylor officiating. In the 1871 census, they were living in the south part of Aylesford Township, and his mother lived with them. All three listed their ethnicity as Irish. Jonathan’s father was supposedly from County Cork, Ireland, but Henrietta was of Dutch descent (Loyalist from New Jersey) and Ruth Taylor Hodges was English, probably Loyalist descent with ancestors from Massachusetts.

Jonathan’s daughter Etha wrote a letter to Albert describing the area and relatives, prior to him visiting Nova Scotia. She said that people knew her father as Sampson. He is so listed in the Kings County birth records for his son Charles, even though the record shows Charles as born in Massachusetts. Besides Etha and Charles, they also had Frank Ditmars Hodges, and an unnamed child who died young.

Jonathan died of tuberculosis on December 17, 1875. The family was living in Cochituate (Wayland) Massachusetts. Although Henrietta described him as an engineer, the death certificate lists his occupation as well digger. Cochituate Village was originally a thriving shoe-manufacturing town in the mid-nineteenth century. Jonathan is buried with his infant son Charles, in at the old Baptist cemetery at Morristown, Nova Scotia.